#jane rendell

[russellmoreton]

Making Spatial Stories : Over time and through space. by Russell Moreton Via Flickr: A place between is spatial. It is a mapping of the topographies between here, there and elsewhere. It is also social, an articulation of the place of dialogue, of the ongoing discussion between one and another. A place between is temporal, it pays attention to time, to the ways in which we locate the then from the now, the now from the yet to come. Jane Rendell.

[photourbanism]

May Mourn is a site-writing which takes a selection of images from a collection of abandoned black and white photographs of modernist architectural icons, part of London’s post war social housing project, found in spring in a derelict arts and crafts house called May Morn in the capital’s green belt and pairs them with texts taken from primelocation.com advertising flats for sale in these same buildings – Jane Rendell

[amliliana]

The Pursuit of Pleasure-gender, space and architecture in Regency London

“Who I am makes a difference to how I read and what I write. It makes a difference to the way I do things, to what and how I can know”– Jane Rendell (Page 2)

When I started this book I was binge watching Netflix and working to finish an art piece. Netflix recommended that I watch Tangerine, so I did. I didn’t particularly like the movie but comparing it to the idea of the rambler that Rendell explores in this book was super interesting.  

In Pursuit of Pleasure, Rendell looks at the Ramble in London in the early 19th century. The Ramble is a section of the city at that time made up of gentlemen’s social clubs, opera houses, theatres, saloons, taverns, inns, and the street scape that these buildings sit within–basically it is a place of leisure for upperclass men to be entertained, gamble, drink, and exchange women within different structures of prostitution and marriage arrangement. 

A rambler is the man who rambles and extrapolated into a literary or cinematic form you could think of it as the dominant male viewpoint, the male gaze. There are so many Rambler movies! At least half of the movies made could be classified as some kind of ramble: Fight Club, that movie Go from the 90s about a bad rave/ecstasy experience, and Tangerine as a few examples. 

I did not like Tangerine as a movie because the movie seems to be made to give a titillating viewpoint into a secret facet of specific strip of urban LA. The voyeur to me is some iteration of the white capitalist patriarchy and there are lots of judgemental undertones that go along with that. The characters were only developed within the limits of this construct. 

What I did like was looking at the layers of space, specifically at Donut Time. It is simultaneously a place to get donuts, a place to rest for the prostitutes, and a place of business for the pimp. The people who like to frequent the prostitutes in this specific area of LA know this is the place to go. People just driving by this area are probably familiar with it but, understanding all of the people inhabiting it and the double/triple/infinite lives of the spaces within it are somewhat invisible. 

***

Reading this book is part of my recent undertaking to study the intersections of feminism (or gender) and architecture. I can see the way the environment has been shaped for specific purposes. This is apart from the actual uses of say a place to eat or a place to shop but more in terms of how it structures our social conditions and the symbolic gestures that are used to include or exclude. How do we program a space simply by the way we use it? 

“Architecture is continually reproduced through use and everyday life” (Page 9) I’m interested in this as an architectural pursuit, as an architect more than I am interested in building things–physical “brick and mortar” things.

“Partly defined by the terms themselves, patriarchy also forms an important way of shaping public and private space. Sylvia Walby has argued that public patriarchy is segregationist and private patriarchy exclusionary…whereas in public patriarchy the institutions of the public domain maintain control of women.” (Page 21)

Rendell goes into detail about many of the spaces in the ramble but, I most liked the descriptions and analysis of the Italian Opera House, a building “designed  to enhance the visual pleasure of looking.” Only a limited number of theaters in London could stage spoken drama’s, they operated under licenses or royal patents, so the theater itself was regulated by the nobility. Thus, it was a place that would reinforce acceptable class and gender norms. As today, you could buy different price levels of tickets and according to which level you purchased you were entitled passage into different spaces. This included entering through different doors, the more central and ornamental door was reserved for the more wealthy patrons while side doors were lower down. On the interior of the space there were grand stairs that were situated so that you would be able to observe the audience as they entered and milled about, while on the inside of the theater there were different levels of being seen and being able to see without being seen. As a gentleman, the pit was least desirable while the private boxes were most. At the highest levels of patronage, gentlemen were afforded access to the green room where they could observe the dancers warming up. It even went as far as gentlemen buying or paying for dancers (as today, they did not get paid very well). Reminds me of that NYCB young donors video :)

Within and adjacent to the opera there were foyers, lobbies, saloons where men would find entertainment before and after shows: gambling, drinking... These places were also occupied by women, generally different classes of prostitutes. “Places for men to enjoy different aspects of visual pleasure - to see and be seen- to display exclusive masculine allegiances to each other and to the public in general” Page 75

Looking forward with this book as a precedent, you can see why the battle for gender neutral restrooms is such a threat to the powers that be. The more we break down segregation within public spaces the less we allow ourselves the necessity to conform to gendered norms. 

[wrongclothingmap]

I want to find a place to be able to operate, to move in between disciplines.

Jane Rendell 

[xuhongzheng]

“The bath sat in the centre of the roof space. The roof space was bedroom, workroom and living room, and many other spaces all at once. From the bath you could look up into the sky, and down into the toilet, or directly onto the stove, beyond it to those eating at the table, and further through the window into the street. The beauty of lying in the bath and being able to talk to the person lying in bed next to you, or downstairs to the person preparing food in the kitchen, showed me the importance of rethinking the kinds of divisions of spaces which we so readily accept.”

Jane Rendell - 'doing it, (un)doing it, (over)doing is yourself: Rhetorics of Architectural Abuse' in Occupying Architecture

[pruemc-blog]

Present. A place between past and future.

Paul Klee Angelus Novus 1920

Angelus Novus shows an angel caught on the threshold of time, allowing the coming together of the past and the future in one instant. Occupying a threshold position in space, time and consiousness: between history and myth, bewteen history and myth, between dream and awakening, between antiquity and modernity [...]

The fugure of the angel is dialectics at a stand-still - a frozen moment encapsulating dialectial contradiction. At this moment, the present is allowed access to the past. Here the past and the future, the has-been and the not-yet, come together in a single configuration creating...a monad.

The above passage is an extract from Jane Rendell's essay Where the Thinking Stops published 2002.

[angusearlarci]

Jane Rendell - 'Critical Spatial Practice'

"...to develop as a critical practice architecture must look to art, and move outside the traditional boundaries of its field and into a place between disciplines. As a mode of cultural production that enjoys a greater degree of separation from economic and social concerns, art can offer architecture a chance for critical reflection and action... once outside the gallery, as 'public art', art is better positioned to initiate critical spatial practices that can inform the activity of architectural design and the occupation of buildings." p191

Art and Architecture: A Place Between

I. B. Tauris and Co Ltd.

London

2008

[angusearlarci]

Jane Rendell - Ruin as Allegory

"My interest is in demonstrating that, while the contemplative or melancholic view that looks inward or backwards into the self or towards the past has often been criticized for being nostalgic and turning away from social critique of current conditions, it is possible for such a position to be critically productive and provide potential for new and different futures.”